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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to determine. The authority to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for his administration, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, anyway; almost all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, massive perennial essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they do not – the government just shuts down. That is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch continues operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens be concerned who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has seized the attention of progressives nationwide. Partly, it is a belated response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has resulted in narrowly split House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state House representation next year; comparable boundary changes are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are likewise emulating California’s example in attempting to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal electorate respond with fear and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek methods to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the process of debate, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their respective maps in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to redraw boundaries that secure permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, in my view, is more substantive, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of melancholic wish for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a better situation – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – the proposition would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their constituents, rather than the reverse; it is negative that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to impede the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is able to cause is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the fight against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch fails to in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that the House and Senate still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and legislative decline, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s additional Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US columnist